This conference brings together the largest and most diverse group of astronomers for 2 weeks of science and sunshine. It's also a perfect chance to continue my ongoing study of gender in speakers versus question askers.

The web form is here, and will be active for the entire 2 weeks of the conference!

Last week I defended my PhD thesis in astronomy! My brother-in-law was good enough to capture the event with my iPhone, so I'm sharing it here for anyone interested. The talk is full of astronomy data visualizations, some that I created last year for talks, and some new! Plus, the subject matter is NASA's epic Kepler mission, so I got that going for me...

The slides are a bit hard to see, so I'll post those online soon (and will update with a link)

Moving forward I'm excited to work on some of the ideas for If We Assume that have fallen to the backburner these past few months. On the professional side of things, starting in the fall I'll begin a 3 year NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in the department of Physics and Astronomy at Western Washington University!

Finally, if you're not watching along as New Horizons passes by Pluto tomorrow (Tuesday, 2015 July 14), then you're missing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! Press conferences will be streamed online, starting at 0730 EDT. Images and videos will be going online constantly over the next few days. Follow the mission on Twitter: @NewHorizons2015, and my friend Alex Parker who works on this exciting mission: @Alex_Parker!